f the political economy of his
paper; and had at this time made an attack upon some opinion of Ricardo
and my father, to which, at my father's instigation, I attempted an
answer, and Coulson, out of consideration for my father and goodwill to
me, inserted it. There was a reply by Torrens, to which I again
rejoined. I soon after attempted something considerably more ambitious.
The prosecutions of Richard Carlile and his wife and sister for
publications hostile to Christianity were then exciting much attention,
and nowhere more than among the people I frequented. Freedom of
discussion even in politics, much more in religion, was at that time far
from being, even in theory, the conceded point which it at least seems
to be now; and the holders of obnoxious opinions had to be always ready
to argue and re-argue for the liberty of expressing them. I wrote a
series of five letters, under the signature of Wickliffe, going over the
whole length and breadth of the question of free publication of all
opinions on religion, and offered them to the _Morning Chronicle_. Three
of them were published in January and February, 1823; the other two,
containing things too outspoken for that journal, never appeared at all.
But a paper which I wrote soon after on the same subject, _a propos_ of
a debate in the House of Commons, was inserted as a leading article; and
during the whole of this year, 1823, a considerable number of my
contributions were printed in the _Chronicle_ and _Traveller_: sometimes
notices of books, but oftener letters, commenting on some nonsense
talked in Parliament, or some defect of the law, or misdoings of the
magistracy or the courts of justice. In this last department the
_Chronicle_ was now rendering signal service. After the death of Mr.
Perry, the editorship and management of the paper had devolved on Mr.
John Black, long a reporter on its establishment; a man of most
extensive reading and information, great honesty and simplicity of mind;
a particular friend of my father, imbued with many of his and Bentham's
ideas, which he reproduced in his articles, among other valuable
thoughts, with great facility and skill. From this time the _Chronicle_
ceased to be the merely Whig organ it was before, and during the next
ten years became to a considerable extent a vehicle of the opinions of
the Utilitarian Radicals. This was mainly by what Black himself wrote,
with some assistance from Fonblanque, who first showed his eminen